


Bounce Back - Chapter 2

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 09:07:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/796430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of "Bounce Back"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bounce Back - Chapter 2

## Bounce Back - Chapter 2

by Jvantheterrible

STILL not mine, STILL not claiming anything other than bad language, lots of angst, and LOTS of fictitional comfort!

Thanks to all who've provided feedback. If you don't like naughty language, why are you reading this? I AM JVANTHETERRIBLE for a REASON!!!!

See part one!

This story is a sequel to: Bounce Back 

* * *

Bounce Back - Chapter 2 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

In my waking hours, I don't remember the last time he smiled at me...I mean, REALLY smiled at me. My dreams are fragmented at best; I can hear someone that appears to be him congratulating me on my accomplishments, and wishing me well in all my future endeavors - Christ, that sounds so much like something that would be written in a yearbook passage! Instead, it's my graduation from the academy, and though I've been harassed quite a bit more than the other cadets, I've stayed at the top of the class - even with my long hair! 

He used to smile at me all the time; when I'd come up with a new test for his senses, or when I'd figure out a new way for him to piggyback sight on smell, or hearing on sight, or...well, any number of combinations. Sure, he might not actually SMILE smile...but that glint would be there in those indigo orbs, egging me on and daring me to do my damnedest to test him, to teach him, to...to lead him. 

That 'smile' has been missing for so long now that I can't remember the last time I saw it, and that's why I feel like such a schmuck lately. It doesn't matter that I passed the academy with flying colors. It holds no significance that I am now wearing a shield to match his, or that we are equals in the eyes of all of our team members. Jim doesn't see me as his equal, even after all this time, and I think it's killing me little by little, day by day, hour by hour. 

I've always been a positive thinker; if anyone EVER needed an opinion that would spur them forward in their goals, they would come to me. 'Blair Sandburg is the answer man!' people used to say, and I would just chuckle and give them my words of wisdom, wishing them well along their own path of self-discovery. But when I graduated from the academy, it suddenly - and quite bluntly - occurred to me that I had no choice in this but to spur myself on, because I'd apparently lost my main cheerleader - one James Joseph Ellison. The one - and only, if I was honest with myself - person who could possibly afford me the grace of an opinion that actually mattered to me! The only one who could 'recharge up the charger'...the only person whose opinion held the tiniest bit of water in the sieve that had thus far in my life been my own mind and soul. 

People and things and places and even experiences had always been the same for me...try it out, say I did it, and move on to the next; see, flowing through the sieve? But that all ceased to jive the day I met Jim Ellison. From that day forward, every goddamn thing that I ever experienced was one to be reckoned with. Jim stuck in my craw, and by God, he was not ever evacuating - come Hell AND high water. I've loved him for that ever since...but it may very well constitute my entire soul's unraveling. 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

The last time I saw that smile in his eyes - AND on his face to boot - was when he held that gold badge out to me, leaning on his cane from that goddamned final run-in with Zoeller, my mom and all of our compatriots gathered around for good measure. He looked so...genuinely interested in me that day. I truly felt that all we'd been through together over the years had finally culminated in something more precious than any psycho could blow apart, or any other human being could even begin to comprehend. He hobbled there and held a future out to me that was for BOTH of us. Together. Two pieces coming together as one...I actually felt like he was ready to come in the water with me, once and for all; in every fucking way that counted. Why else would he reserve that badge...that...that shield of honor and respect and protection within the circle of our 'Brothers in Blue' for me? For the child of a self-proclaimed peace-loving hippie whose mother still referred to cops as 'pigs', even if she DID apologize to Jim every time she said it?! For me, Blair Sandburg, the would-be professor whose entire collegiate career of nearly ten years CEASED TO BE because of my very own dedication to my research?! No, my very own obsession with my research subject - despite the intelligence I possessed that would still, to this day, haunt me with its ramblings of 'you should've known better, Blair...this can only end badly.' 

Hindsight is always 20/20, is it not? I knew damn good and well what I was doing when I chose blindness; I'd known it the first day I'd run into Jim in the hospital, and I pursued it - and him - anyway. Truth be told? I'd do it all over again. I love him...and at the end of the day, and the road, and everything else that matters in this godforsaken world...what else really matters? That fucking, FUCKING badge that he dangled in front of me was way more than a new career. It was a bold and brazen offer to join James Ellison as his partner. He had to know what that meant...didn't he? We were already best friends. We were already roommates. We were already partners in most of MC's eyes, and what else was really left except... 

...and so I took that offer, goddamn me forever, I did. I took Jim's offer to join him in his life as a full partner, and I guess...I suppose I assumed that it was...just a tad more than an occupational upgrade. Hell, I'd already died once on his watch, and I figured he wouldn't invite me in for more of the same if he didn't really mean it. I mean, MEAN it, man. Mean it as in, "Join me, Sandburg, and let us thwart the evils of the Great City of Cascade together, me the Sentinel and you my Guide, and when we get home at the end of the day, we'll peel one another's capes and tights off and blow each other into ecstasy!" I guess Jim must've missed that chapter of the book...or had I? 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

I did the academy as best as I could. I put up with the fucking put-downs, and faggot remarks, and ass-kissing commentaries, and even the occasional more-than-brutal turn in the self-defense ring. I wore those cuts and bruises like the badge I was to earn at the end of my penance, because I knew that Jim was behind me. At least, I thought he'd been behind me. Thank Christ he hadn't let me down while I was still in training, or I'd never have made it. The very idea of being awarded as I stood next to Jim at the graduation ceremony was more than enough incentive to keep me going until I'd finished academy Hell. To this day, I can't ever remember smiling more widely - or proudly - as I did that day, Ellison standing next to me as I was awarded both my badge and my pins for completion of the courses. 

It wasn't so much that I'd survived the actual training, or managed to mostly ignore all the bullshit tossed my way throughout those fifteen weeks; it was the very fact that my Sentinel...my Holy Grail, my roommate, my fucking PARTNER...was there, beaming just as widely as me. He was just as proud to have me for an equal as I was to BE his equal. And if I could have bottled that moment so that I could hold it as close to me physically as I held it spiritually...well, that particular spirit would be so banned by law that it would be futile to even mention its existence! But I didn't need to bottle it. I was living the high! And when James Joseph Ellison looked down at me as I accepted my diploma AND my shield, with all the members of Cascade's Major Crimes Division jumping to their feet and applauding me...well, I knew that right then, that moment, was all I'd been put on earth to accomplish. 

Only trouble was, I didn't know what to do once that enthusiasm died down and slowly but surely faded away. After a few weeks, it was old hat to the guys that I was with Jim. Hell, it was old hat to JIM! The only person still grooving on that endorphin-based high was yours truly, and though that had always been enough to sustain me in the past, it just didn't...quite...make it now. I needed Jim's acceptance and praise, but it was gone; he'd spent himself on the day of graduation, and it was back to business as usual...the only difference now was, he couldn't really tell me to stay in the truck anymore. And I never thought I'd ever actually say it, but I longed for him to tell me to stay in the fucking truck...just ONCE...just one more time so I'd know that he cared that much for me. So that I'd know that he cared for me now the way that he used to...please Jim, just one more time, man...please? 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

I tested it out on him a few weeks ago, before all this shit went down. He was in watching the Jags game, and I came out of my bedroom after IM'ing with some of my old friends from Rainier, feeling a bit melancholy due to recalling old times BM - that's before Major Crimes - and I said, "Hey, Jim man, can I ask you something?" I didn't think he'd heard me at first, and then I laughed aloud as I remembered that he always heard EVERYTHING I said; hell, he'd probably been transcribing my IM while I was in my room...and he said, "Yeah, Chief, what is it?" 

Ohhh-kayyy, so maybe he hadn't heard my IM after all..."Jim, do you remember what I said to you after you fished me out of that fucking fountain on campus? I mean, at the hospital, when you were talking to me once I was awake?" There, that would jog the emotional side of his Sentinel brain... 

"Uh, sure Chief, yeah, 'the water's fine...come on in', some shit like that, right?" he answered, shouting, "NO! GODDAMMIT," at the TV as the Jags missed yet another free throw shot. He didn't even look at me as he said it, and it was that very moment that I understood and fully comprehended the magnitude of his feelings for me. The truth was, there was nothing there, other than a brotherly love that might be attributed to being roommates and friends for so long...or maybe even 'brothers in blue'...but other than that, James Joseph Ellison had no feelings whatsoever for me, Blair Jacob Sandburg. I think a certain percentage of my existence died off at that moment...and just the tiniest iota more kicked off every millisecond after. Right up to the time that I decided that it would be better to not be at all, than to be...and be ignored by the only person in the universe that I'd ever felt any long-lasting connection to. Jim Ellison, my Sentinel and Blessed Protector extraordinaire, was slowly but surely killing me...and I decided, right then and there, that I was going to let him. Oh, sure, he could turn it around at any time...by showing anything more than a passing secondary glance my way...but that didn't happen. 

By the time three months had passed, I'd decided that I'd lost enough of myself that it was time to write "The Letter" as I'd come to call it. I no longer cared if I was taken out in the line of duty...Jim was so far removed from me by that point that I didn't believe that he'd give that much of a shit anyway. I visited an old student of mine that had become a pharmacist, complained about being 'on the beat and unable to sleep', and he'd written me a prescription on the spot for sleeping pills. I thanked him with my usual effervescence, the faux bounce in my step fooling even him, and I made my way out of the pharmacy with my small white envelope as I headed home and sat down at the desk in my room. 

Jim wasn't home from work yet, so I powered up my trusty portable and opened up Windows, closing my eyes as I cracked my knuckles and then placed my fingertips on the keys that I knew so well from my many seemingly unending days as a student and student teacher. I couldn't bring myself to look at the screen as I typed, the tears already forming in my eyes and blurring my vision as I set to my next-to-final task. I clenched my lids shut tight and wrote the very words that appeared, as yet unseen to me, on the screen in front of my body. 

"My Dearest Jim," I managed to pound out despite my heart and soul-felt grief at my own words, "...Five and a half years ago, we met under some crazy circumstances. I faked being a doctor so that I could worm my way into your life...and oh, man, if I'd ever known that you and I both would have come this far? Well, I'd do it all over again, and I mean that, Jim, honestly..." 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

When I wrote that godforsaken letter, I really - no, TRULY - had no visions of taking my own life. I wrote it because those words were in my heart, and my soul, and if anything horrible ever happened to me, I wanted Jim to know how I really felt about him. I loved him, and even if he didn't love me back, I believed whole-heartedly that he deserved to know my true feelings about him. I didn't have the balls to tell him myself, or maybe we would've gotten together before my own little personal tragedy struck...and maybe I just would've ended up getting my ass kicked, and had to have licked my so-called wounds in private in some studio apartment of my own. 

By the time I went to bed that night with the bottle of pills in my palm, I knew that there was no way that Jim or God or Allah or...well, whoever the HELL is in charge upstairs - was going to take me on. Or take pity on me. I'd finally made up my mind to ask Jim what he thought about the whole fountain incident weeks before, and the impact of our spirit animals merging...and he'd given me his reply. Funny, but it seemed that for the last two months since I'd asked him about that morning, his eyes were just a bit more distant each time they met my gaze. 

Paranoid? Perhaps...but as I've already stated, my mind had been a sieve before a certain Sentinel made his mark on my thoughts and beliefs. There was no longer any reason for me to hold out hope that HE would see me as anything more than what I was so-called destined to be to him. And just what was I to be to him, anyway? His Guide...the Shaman that could lead the way for him since Incacha's untimely demise on our living room sofa? His partner...who could always show him how to use his senses - because he was too goddamned stubborn to see them for himself? Or his friend, who would always have his back in the field...now that MY field was permanently removed from the picture, of course? 

He must've been wayyy into the game that night, or he would've heard my softly spoken words, beckoning him at the same time that I pushed him away. Even as my hands typed out my final wishes, my lips spoke softly of other things, other wishes, other promises that I wished he could - and would - keep. "I'm telling you that it's okay for you to treat me this way, Jim...ignoring me and using me when it's convenient for you to do so. I love you so much that I'll allow you that indiscretion...and however many more it takes for us to be equal, finally, on the same plane of existence that you know that you need me with you as I need you with me in order to fucking COMPLETE me. I know that you and I are connected on the so-called 'Spirit Plane', and I want you to hear me now, even as you read the words that my conscious being is typing out at this very moment. I love you, James Joseph Ellison, and I have since the very day we met. I don't give one iota of a FUCK what has transpired to get us to this point...the only thing that matters is that you hear me, man...hear me and know what I'm trying to say, and hold me close to you always and forever. I love you more than my own life, and everything that I've appeared to have given up thus far...baby, it's not a sacrifice. It's my promise to you that I will always be here for you, no matter what. The love that I have for you is bigger than you, and bigger than me...and bigger than both of us together. It's something that's grown and manifested itself back from that first day when I was nothing more to you than a "Neo Hippie Witch Doctor Punk" - high on drugs for all you knew. It's grown into something so large and out of control that I no longer hold the reins; just as you no longer know what to do to rein me in. 

"Know this, Sentinel of the Great City...when you do find me, my earthly body no longer willing to heed your call...I loved you more than my own life, and that is why I had to take it. I took my life while I still could, separating myself and my own downward spiral from you, so that you could live and go on to protect Cascade, and our 'Brothers in Blue' there, and the like. Whatever words you read...whatever you believe came from my own hands...this is my true message to you, and I leave it for you and you alone to decipher. I love you, James Joseph Ellison, and I can't bear to miss that gleam in your eyes for one more day, knowing that it was me that stole it away. I love you, always and forever Jim, you must believe me...I know you do..." 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

"Alright, you son of a bitch. I got your letter, and I am so ready to toss it back into your face. All you have to do is open those baby blues of yours...come on, I dare you, Chief. You fucking COWARD! I read between your lines, and I got your message, okay? OKAY? You stupid fucking brainiac, I got what you wanted me to get!" The data was pouring over me like hot tar from the middle ages being dumped down over that week's invading serfs...I was still in a state of half-sleep and half-waking, but I could see things more clearly than I'd been able to for months previous! 

"Open your eyes, Chief. I got it, okay? I read between the lines, and I got it...you FUCK! You...you...I fucking LOVE you, you piece of shit...come on, OPEN THEM! LET ME SEE YOUR EYES, CHIEF!" I was sure that my screaming would draw at LEAST a few nurses, but apparently no one had heard me. In fact, the only one who'd heard me was the last one on my list as 'Most Likely To Be Conscious'. I leaned down to kiss the forehead of my still unclaimed and unPROclaimed lover when... 

...he opened the aforementioned baby blues and gazed up at me with such blinding love and trust and faith that I nearly passed out. Hell, for all I know, I DID pass out...or came...I'm not sure which was more powerful at that moment, but whatever it was, I was in it mind, body, and soul. 

"Blair," I whispered, and without uttering so much as one syllable or moving a single muscle, the feeling of being HOME overcame me, and I collapsed back down into the godforsaken orange plastic chair conveniently beneath my ass. Stuck in much the same position as I'd been for the past 12 hours, his un-IV'd hand held in mine, I clutched his appendage to my chest just over my heart and proceeded to cry like a baby as he managed nothing more than one single word. 

It was that one little word that changed my entire life as I knew it, from that moment forward. My partner had overcome so many obstacles in our relationship, rising above everything thus far and emerging, yet again, victorious. And the one word that he managed to utter aloud...the one thing that he had on his mind as he gained consciousness against all of the doctors' warnings of brain damage and never again being the man that he was before...that one word escaped my partner's lips. And it was then that I realized just how much he felt for me...and his determination to overcome yet another seemingly impossible obstacle. 

I had to hunch down close to his lips to hear what he was saying...and as soon as I'd managed to transcribe, I let my tears being anew, not caring one fucking bit if anyone thought less of me for it. I looked up with a grin at the doctors and nurses gathered around us, lured in by the sudden increase in readings on the monitors. They had no fucking idea what to do with what I told them Blair had said...but I knew. I knew what to do with it...in spades. 

I looked up at all the eager faces surrounding us, ready to relay Blair's message. As the tears made their way down my cheeks, I stood up proudly from my spot in the orange chair alongside his bed and said, quite simply despite the Texas-sized lump currently residing in my throat, "Wonderburger. He's going to be fine," I finished with a half-sob to the doctors, all of whom breathed a collective sigh of relief as I leaned down, his hand still clutched in both of mine, and planted the first of two kisses. 

One went on his forehead, the most tender and loving example of brotherhood that I could possibly express. The second...well, that one involved a bit of the tip of my tongue flicking across his still lax lips...but being a Sentinel, I didn't miss for one millisecond the slight bit of a half-grin that appeared immediately thereafter. 

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO**

* * *

End Bounce Back - Chapter 2 by Jvantheterrible: duranjaxter@comcast.net

Author and story notes above.

  
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